The Men Who Could Be King - MotoGP 2015 Finale Preview

We've come to it at last, the showdown! Valentino Rossi versus Jorge Lorenzo for the world. After seventeen races, spanning eight months, the championship stands on a knife edge. Both Yamaha riders have but a seven-point gap to each other after an incredible season of highs and lows, jubilation and heartbreak, with just a smidgen of controversy thrown in there for good measure.

MotoGP 2015 really has had it all. And after everything we've been through, we are still none the wiser as to whom we will crown World Champion after the Valencia Grand Prix on Sunday.

Valentino Rossi comes into the final round with a seven-point lead over his team-mate and stands on the precipice of legend. If he wins the title on Sunday he will become the greatest motorcycle Grand Prix rider of all time. He has just one problem; 23 bikes lay between the Italian and Lorenzo. Much has been made of the incident at Sepang between Rossi and Marc Marquez, but the long and short of it is - Rossi starts from the back of the grid.

This has made his job all the more tricky, but that isn't to say impossible. The Ricardo Tormo Circuit isn't his favourite, something he has made plain in recent weeks. But his record in Valencia isn't disastrous; he's enjoyed a couple of wins and a handful of podiums, and he did take pole position at the track last year remember. Of course the memory that will stick out in his mind, and in that of everyone else, is 2006 when he came into the race with an eight-point lead and crashed out. But that was an altogether different circumstance. Lin Jarvis, Sporting Director of Yamaha, stated in a post-Sepang press conference that, coming into Valencia in 06, he “fully expected Valentino to win the championship”. Nine years later, we're coming into Valencia fully expecting Valentino not to win the championship; the pressure is off, he knows what happened in Sepang has severely hampered him but he won't simply accept his fate. Rossi will go out swinging.

Consider this; the Italian's main issue this year has been qualifying, it's something that has cost him race victories. In Valencia he doesn't need to focus on Saturday performance because of his grid drop. This means that he has the whole weekend to fettle race set-up, a luxury his team-mate doesn't have. If Lorenzo happens to finish third, Rossi only needs sixth to clinch it.

A hard task, but again, not impossible. Whereas Rossi technically has a zero-point lead, coming from last place, Lorenzo still has a seven-point deficit so still needs to finish the race. He'll also have both Factory Hondas to contend with, who, contrary to what the tinfoil cap-clad on the internet may say, will most definitely not be out to make the Spaniard's day easy.

Vito Ippolito, President of the FIM, published an open letter expressing his thoughts on the Sepang incident and you can bet there will be a word had from him with all of the riders about any possible aiding. Both Yamaha and Honda will also be having words with their riders after Repsol's quit threat – no one wants this situation to blow up any more than it already has.

Dani Pedrosa's form of late, and Marquez' desire for wins, will see Honda out to end the season on top and detract some limelight from Yamaha on their big day. But Lorenzo probably won't need Honda's help anyway, because he is fairly handy around Valencia. He, too, has a couple of wins to his name and a handful of podiums, and loves the circuit. Circumstance has gotten in the way on several occasions: a poor call in the changeable conditions last year saw him on the wrong bike, whilst in 2012 he crashed out trying to lap James Ellison's PBM bike when in a commanding lead. This is something he'll be wary of. Rain, mechanical, crashes will all be things Lorenzo will be considering and that may affect his riding.

His immediate aim will be a good qualifying and then nailing the start. If he gets in front into turn one then he'll alleviate a lot of pressure. If he gets jumped however, his race then becomes dictated by his team-mates progression through the field.

What Lorenzo can't allow is complacency. He looked smug on the podium after the race in Malaysia because he knew retribution was heading Rossi's way, and with his penalty Lorenzo's task has been made a little easier. But, as I mentioned earlier about 2006, nothing is ever certain, especially in motorcycle racing.

Those opening laps will be crucial for Rossi and his hopes. He needs to pass as many bikes as possible in the first few laps and hope Lorenzo gets held up by the Factory RC213V-mounted duo. If he manages this, then Lorenzo will have to start thinking about getting amongst the Hondas just to cover his team-mate off. This will of course break the internet if he is between the Repsol bikes, but if anything this could be a bigger problem.

Marquez' reputation took a knock after his part in the Sepang Clash, and he'll be damned if he gets himself into that bother again. So Marquez then may be even more aggressive with Lorenzo just to prove a point, which in turn puts Jorge into a predicament.

So there's already a lot of permutations and possibilities for this race, but there is one more that will be in high focus as the days between now and qualifying count down. Rossi appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport last week to have his penalty from Speang overturned. Because these types of cases can take up to a year to be heard, if Rossi's appeal is successful, his penalty will be temporarily suspended and will thus start the Grand Prix of Valencia from where he qualifies. We will know everything by the 6th November.

If successful, then Lorenzo's job becomes harder. But this does also have implications on Rossi's weekend preparations too. If a decision does take until Saturday, then he will have to sacrifice valuable race set-up time during practice to get a qualifying setting sorted. And if his appeal is unsuccessful, he's compromised heading into Sunday which will do nothing for his nerves. If his penalty is suspended, then Lorenzo is going to have to get aggressive whether he wants to or not because he knows that if Rossi finishes ahead of him it's game over.

Exciting, isn't it?

Taking Malaysia out of the equation, where neither of the title protagonists represented themselves well, both riders thoroughly deserve to win. Lorenzo has shown peerless performance in all of the Grand Prix he took to the top of the rostrum in. He is the fastest man on the grid when the conditions are to his liking, which is on most weekends, and has very much made a convincing case for the 2015 title.

He hasn't been perfect though. We all remember his run of four back-to-back victories from Jerez to Barcelona, but his opening three races saw him 29 points behind coming into the European leg. To his defence, he suffered an odd helmet malfunction in Qatar and was ill in Austin. But Holland and Germany saw him just lacking in pace, and a fogged up visor at Silverstone as a result of not running a nose guard was just a daft error on his part. His cardinal sin was allowing his team-mate to drag him around a rapidly drying Misano on wet tyres when the rest were switching to slicks. In keeping Rossi in sight he led himself to his demise from the race at the penultimate corner with seven laps still to run.

If Lorenzo is to lose this title it will be as a result of a silly mistake, committed prior or during the race. Japan is a perfect example of the Spaniard shooting himself in the foot when in a winning position. He pushed too hard at the start to break his team-mate's resolve but failed to take into account the drying track, which he later said he hadn't expected, even though it hadn't rained since the Moto3 race. - he pissed a three-second gap, and a win, into the wind and dropped to third.

Rossi, though not always the fastest guy on track, has certainly been one of the most consistent. This is evidenced by the fact that he has finished every race in the top five, missing the podium only twice. His wins in Qatar, Argentina, Assen and Great Britain were hardly plain sailing either. The latter three were hard-fought contests with much faster bikes, whilst Silverstone was the Doctor showcasing his sublime wet weather riding.

He has proven on a number of occasions to be a match for Lorenzo, but his qualifying and his starts have let him down big time. In Qatar and Argentina he did come all the way from eighth, but those were some exceptional races, Argentina in particular. There have been several weekends where he could have won but was left with a recovery job on his hands – Barcelona, Indianapolis, Brno, Aragon and Australia all spring to mind.

And of course what happened in Malaysia will haunt the Italian forever. He lost his cool, the pressure of a championship getting to him prior to the weekend and leading to a retaliation from Marquez, which in turn led to turn fourteen on lap seven and ultimately his (potential) demotion to the back of the grid for the crucial encounter this weekend.

So who will win the 2015 MotoGP World Championship?

This isn't over by a long shot, regardless of the situation. 2015 has been so full of twists that anything can happen. This truly has been a golden year and it deserves a title decider befitting of it and I think we'll get it, I hope we get it.

Who do I think will do it? Well, given what we've seen so far in 2015, and taking everything above into account, the fans!

And if you're wondering, yes, it's quite comfy on this fence...

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